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No details yet for Hardeeville welcome center

COLUMBIA — Some welcoming changes are planned for South Carolina’s nine welcome centers, including the one in Hardeeville.

This month the Associated Press reported about $3 million will be shifted to the S.C. Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism from the transportation department, to be used on the welcome centers.

That goes for the welcome centers near the Savannah River, including North Augusta’s site, located Interstate 20 eastbound, and Jasper County’s, just north of Savannah on I-95 northbound.

“It’s pretty early in the process,” said Marion Edmonds, spokesman for PRT, adding the tourism agency has signed an agreement with the transportation department, about the new role.

“We would be stepping in and doing more with landscaping and managing the overall welcoming centers sites, not just the interiors,” said Edmonds.

Landrum is the first site officials have taken on to test new technology and other improvements.

“We really aren’t at the point where we’ve done specific plans for upgrades to individual centers, except for the work initially starting at Landrum,” he said, adding it should be completed by the end of the year.

“From that, we’ll gather information, examine how it works, plug that into planning what we’ll be doing at each particular center.”

Welcome centers haven’t always been assigned so much importance.

In 2010, then-Gov. Mark Sanford opposed a one-year budget item that would have barred a closure or staff reduction at the Santee Welcome Center.

Sanford called it “the least productive of the three welcome centers on I-95,” serving just 186,630 visitors in one year. By comparison, the governor wrote, the Dillon Welcome Center had 275,084 visitors and the Hardeeville Welcome Center had nearly 400,000 visitors during the same period.